Are You Ready to Query?

You've got your manuscript finished, beta-read, edited, and polished. You're confident it's ready to go. You want to try for traditional publication, so you know finding an agent is the next step. You've done some research, so you know you'll have to query to find the right agent. But that's not all you'll need. If you're getting ready to enter the query trenches, here's a checklist of things to do before you begin.

1) Prepare your list of agents. Make sure you do your research and develop a list of agents you'd want to work with if they decide they'd like to represent you. Check querytracker.com, Publisher's Marketplace, and of course, the agent/agency's own website for details. Double or triple-check each agent's submission guidelines to ensure you're sending exactly what they're asking for.

2) Write and polish your query letter. There are lots of resources out there for doing this, but you can't do better than reading every entry on queryshark.blogspot.com. When you've completed your query, give it to a couple of critique partners for input. Often, you'll be so close to your manuscript at this point that you won't be able to read your own query objectively.

3) Write and polish a synopsis. More and more agents are asking for these, and it makes sense to have one in your arsenal before you start querying. I suggest writing a long (5 page) and a short (2 page) synopsis so you can send whichever one is requested. Check out my posts here for plenty of tips on writing the synopsis, along with my 14 synopsis critiques!

4) Clean up your social media presence. Some agents will do their diligence on prospective clients before signing them, or even before requesting more pages. Make sure your Twitter, Facebook, and other social media accounts reflect what you want an agent to see in you.

5) Create a submission tracking system. querytracker.com is great for this, or you can create a chart or spreadsheet to keep track of who you've submitted to, when, and what the result was. You don't want to accidentally double-submit to someone, and being diligent about tracking is the best way to avoid this.

Best of luck to all of you, and QUERY ON!!!

#AtoZchallenge New Tools Every Author Should Be Using

The #AtoZChallenge 2017 Theme at Operation Awesome is the Publishing Journey.

Today's guest post is by Leslie Hauser.
New Tools Every Author Should Be Using

Welcome to another day of the 2017 April A to Z Blogging Challenge. I'm super excited for this opportunity to write a guest post for Operation Awesome and talk about something that I've had a lot of experience with lately: Being an author.

Being an author can sometimes feel like this:

But I've discovered through my journey that a few tools can make life as an author a lot easier and open up a lot of doors:


1. QueryTracker

As an author, you have several paths to publication: 1) secure an agent as a means to be published by one of the major publishing houses, 2) submit on your own to smaller publishing houses, and 3) self-publishing. No matter which you choose, you need to keep track of the process.

If you are querying agents, then QueryTracker is for you. QueryTracker allows you to find agents listed in its database. This will help you narrow your search to include only agents who accept your genre. It also has a feature that allows you to track and organize your queries, and you can review agent data such as response time and preferences. This is all free! ItÕs such a great resource. If you want to track more than one novel or are into data reports, you might want to upgrade to the Premium membership. If not, then the free version has all you need.






2. Hootsuite

Social media is so important for an author. You have to get your name out there, and some publishers won't feel comfortable taking a chance on you if you don't have a social media presence. There are many choices: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Goodreads, Snapchat, Litsy, Bloglovin', LinkedIn, Google+, and your own blog. It's a ton!

My advice is to pick 2 or 3 that you really feel comfortable with and focus on those. But even with this, keeping up with your social media channels could be a full-time job! This is where a social media manager can help you. I like Hootsuite the best. You can schedule posts, track certain hashtags, track your mentions, and be alerted to all of this. It's very easy to use. I'm still getting used to it because scheduled tweets sometimes sound forced to me. And sometimes I like to tweet in response to things I read on Twitter. But when I have blog posts or weekly Instagram quotes I want to post and promote, the scheduler is helpful in getting multiple tweets out throughout the day. It's also helpful to track hashtags I might want to participate in.


3. PicMonkey

As an author, you want to make as many contacts in the writing and blogging worlds as possible. This will mean participating in blog hops, weekly memes, and posting some attention-getting posts on social media. When I started doing this, all these people had such fun graphics to go along with their posts. If you're not much of a graphic artist like me, you might also be wondering, How do they do this? Then I stumbled upon PicMonkey. I looked into it, and it's been one of the greatest tools I have now. I create graphics and announcements for blog posts; I add text to pictures for weekly quote posts on Instagram; and I'm able to create Facebook banners and other site-specific graphics that don't look all wonky when I try to upload them.

This is a cover image I made in PicMonkey for my weekly Photo Stories post on Niume (another tool explained below!).

4. Pixabay

If you want to have great blog posts and use PicMonkey for personalized graphics, you need pictures. But with all the copyright laws, it becomes a little scary and confusing. What can you use? What kind of attribution is correct? This problem was solved for me when I discovered Pixabay. All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. This means you are free to use them! I always try to link back to the profile of the person who posted the photo as a courtesy. By far, this is the best free-use photo site I've found. It has the most choices, and I canÕt think of a time I've been looking for a photo and haven't found it there.

I make my weekly literary quotes with pictures from Pixabay.

5. Niume

Do you want to make money for all this blogging that you're doing? Do you want to get a blog post and social media outreach done at the same time? Then let me introduce you to my new friend, Niume. It's fairly new and rising in popularity. It uses a concept called "collaborative blogging". Bloggers are separated into themed segments known as Spheres. Here people can share interests and find information on shared interests. The best part is that you get paid! I'm still relatively new to this, and by no means am I quitting my day job. But, the more "shares" and "hype" your posts get, the more money you make. With enough hype, your post can become a Staff Pick and be featured. What does all this mean for you? More exposure and a little help by giving you a built-in audience, especially if you're new to blogging or promoting yourself. Plus if you get really good at it, you can make some nice side money!


Overall, I'd say being an author is exciting, but it can also be extremely overwhelming. Hopefully some of these tools will help make your journey a little more manageable, too. Good luck!

Author bio:
Leslie Hauser teaches middle school English and history. Though originally from Ohio, she currently resides in Los Angeles, California, with her dog Mr. Darcy. Her debut novel CHASING EVELINE releases 2017 from Pen Name Publishing. Visit Leslie at www.lesliehauser.com.

Writing Series: Querying & How to Find Your Best Fit Agents

In our writing series this month, we've been giving you some pointers on querying. Kara talked about how Twitter can be a great resource for querying writers & Melinda gave you four fabulous resources to help you on your quest. Today, I'm going to talk about one of my favorite things: spreadsheets.

We've given you NaNo goal spreadsheets, numerical motivation spreadsheets, and now, I give you:

THE AGENT RESEARCH SPREADSHEET! (download HERE)

Let's break it down:

Column A: AGENCY
Obviously, you're going to want to know what agencies you're querying. I've found it easiest to organize my spreadsheet alphabetically by agency.

Column B: AGENT
Here, I make a row for each agent at the agency who represents the genre(s) I'm interested in. Quite frequently, agents will move agencies; at that point, I just copy/paste that row to the new agency and make a comment (right click - "insert comment") to that effect.

Columns C-E: PREVIOUS QUERIES
If this is the first book you've sent out to agents, you can delete these. If you've queried previously (even if it was years ago!) here's where you keep track of who rejected at the query stage (R) or after requesting a partial (P) or full (F). If the agent has requested materials in the past, this is a great thing to mention in your query.

Columns F-I: GENRES
Here's where we get into the research portion of our spreadsheet. The first place I'd go to get your preliminary list is Query Tracker.

Here, you can search for agents who represent the genres you're looking for. Keep the big picture in mind. Although some agents will represent books outside their usual genres for their existing clients, but in general, if you want to write both science fiction and romance, for instance, an agent who has interest and experience in both those categories might be a better fit than those who represent just one. This is a great place to start compiling your list.

In my example to the left (cropped from my spreadsheet), I marked agents who represented commercial, science fiction, fantasy, and historical.

[Side note:
I recently ran across this fabulous infographic that explains the differences between commercial, upmarket, and literary fiction. If you're not sure which of these large umbrellas your work fits under, it's definitely worth checking out!]

In my opinion, Query Tracker is the best place to start your agent search. On the agents' individual pages, you can find links to their agency websites, blogs, twitter hashtag, interviews, etc. which can provide a plethora of useful information about them. Also, for $25/year, you can subscribe to the premium version and access a wealth of statistics and charts for each agent and set up lists for multiple projects.


Columns J-K: RECENT SALES
These next columns require you to dig a bit deeper. I'm talking about Publishers Marketplace. This is a fantastic resource for querying writers, but -- heads up! -- most information that I'll be talking about here requires a subscription. At $25/month it's an investment, but the information you'll find there is invaluable.

The first thing you'll want to check out is the Dealmakers tab. Here you can search by genre to see the actual deals that agents have been making to publishers on behalf of their clients. The information here is submitted by agents themselves, so there may be omissions (some agents simply don't report their sales), but it's a great place to start if you're wondering who has connections with publishers and imprints.

After you click on the genre you'd like, PM will display the top 100 agents in the category, as well as a separate tab to display only six-figure+ deals. From here, you can click on the agent's name and see which editors and imprints they sold to, as well as a listing of these individual deals which look a little something like this:

Yay, Sarah!

In my spreadsheet, I gave certain point values to each deal made in the past twelve months. There's tons of information available on Publishers Marketplace; how you use it is up to you.

Columns L-M: REP CHECK

Two more resources you'll probably want to check are the AAR (Association of Authors' Representatives) site and Preditors & Editors.

AAR is the main professional organization for literary agents. Agents who are members of AAR must adhere to their Canon of Ethics and meet certain criteria. There are many ethical and reputable agents who choose not to belong to this organization for various reasons, but if they are a member, they'll be held to those standards.

Preditors & Editors is a listing which includes literary agents and -- most importantly -- gives warnings to writers about agents who have conflicts of interest, who charge fees, or are known scammers. If P&E has a warning listed regarding an agency, you'd best stay away. Remember, a bad agent is going to be worse for your career than no agent at all.

Column N: CLIENTS

Here's where I list the authors I know and/or have read who are represented by the agent. Ideally, these would be authors who write in similar or overlapping genres, whose works you enjoy. Most agencies will list their clients somewhere on their site, but other times, you might need to go digging. Here's a few ways to find that information:

• Look in the Acknowledgements section in the back of your favorite books. Often authors will thank their agents there
• Look on the "contact" page of the author's website
• Look in the author's twitter bio
• Search the author's name in Publishers Marketplace
• Google search "[author name]" + "agent"

Column O: #MSWL

Another great resource for querying writers is #MSWL (ManuScript WishList). Using this Twitter hashtag, agents tweet specific things that they'd like to see in their query inboxes. If your manuscript matches this, you can include "#MSWL" in the subject line of your query and it might get a second look or bumped up the pile.

Don't feel like scrolling all the way through months and months' worth of tweets? Check out the new #MSWL website which makes it much easier to search by agent name or genre or date.

Column P: RANK

Here's a column to prioritize your queries. Generally speaking, it's a good idea to query in batches of about 10-15 at a time, but there's many variations in how you might do it: by agent's average response time (which can be found on QueryTracker)? By number of recent deals? Alphabetically by twitter hashtag? However you go about it, it's important to keep track of which queries you've sent to whom and when. QueryTracker has a great database for doing that.

Column Q-S: QUERY INFO

In my personal spreadsheet, I keep this information on a separate sheet where I also mark down the date of each communication (query sent, response received, requested materials sent, etc), but I wanted to include this here because it's an important part of researching agents. Each agent and agency has their own submission guidelines and ignoring them will likely start off your relationship with the agent on the wrong foot.

QueryTracker does often list the information here (particularly the email address), however, I'd highly recommend going directly to the agency's website for the most up-to-date guidelines.

Most agents ask that writers include a number of sample pages (column R), and some may also require a synopsis (column S), so here's where you'd keep track of that. Generally speaking, most agents want these materials pasted directly into the email, but again, check the agency's guidelines on their website.

[Side note: One tool that makes this whole process easier is Gmail's "canned responses." If you're not sure what that is or how to use it, check out this how-to. You can set one up with your query (remember to type in the correct agent's name and any personalization!), one with the first 5 pages, 10 pages, and one with the synopsis, then simply insert the parts you'd need into your email]

Column T: NOTES

And finally, here's where you put all the other little notes you want to remember about each agent -- places you've met them, fandoms you both enjoy, any other notes that will help you narrow down your search.

Researching literary agents can be incredibly time consuming, but if you're truly serious about pursuing trade publication, it's going to be worth it to make sure you have someone on your side who's going to be the best fit for you and your work!

Good luck!

Where Do You Go for Query Feedback?

In my last post, I listed quite a few resources for getting your query into shape. But once you've polished your query or pitch to shiny perfection, you'll need someone to give you helpful feedback.

It's preferable to find at least one reader who has not read the actual book. This way they can tell you where they got lost, where they may have misinterpreted plot elements, whether they could keep the characters straight. Here are some places you might find just the feedback you're looking for:

Absolute Write's Query Letter Hell (you'll need to register to be able to see the Share Your Work forum, where Query Letter Hell lives)
Nathan Bransford's forums
Verla Kay's Boards
Ladies Who Critique
Query Tracker's Forum

Any of these can help you get some fresh eyes on the page, but only post if you're ready to hear honest feedback--because you're likely to get it!

Conferences big and small almost always have query critique opportunities, public or private. Plus, some paid editorial services offer free query critiques as a way to see if their style is a good match for yours. And many writing-related auctions (like my upcoming Pens for Paws Auction) are offering chances at critiques and feedback from agents.

If you still want more, there are places to get your query publicly shredded (or better yet, learn from other people's mistakes before yours gets a chance to see the light of day):
Evil Editor
Query Shark
Miss Snark's blog
The Rejecter
You cannot submit to those last two for critique since they're no longer active, but I highly recommend working through the archives.

Any query blunders you'd like to share to save the rest of us from making the same mistakes? Confession: my first query was two printed pages long, because I got clever and combined a one-page synopsis with my bio. Don't try this at home!

How to Make Your Characters Behave.

So I went to the Query Tracker forum yesterday. FYI, I was one of the first members of that forum in its baby stage. I used to spend loads of time posting on that forum, as you can tell since I still am one of the record holders to most time online. (Yes yes, I was on there a LOT back then.)

One of the topics was about how you get past the sludgy bits in a manuscript, especially when you have exciting scenes a few chapters ahead. We've all been there, when the writing feels like you are walking through curdled chocolate pudding. It feels like it takes forever!

A few suggestions I thought were very interesting. One person said that when their characters aren't cooperating, she tells them they are going to Disneyworld. And when the charters say, WTF, they end up taking her by the hand and leading her where they need to go.

Another person said that she writes a "shower scene". Can you all imagine what would happen if BAM, all of sudden your characters are in a shower? I"m sure interesting conversation would develop for sure.

I thought that they were both creative and fun suggestions to a problem we all face in the slow, transitional bits of our writing. It got me thinking: Wouldn't it be fun to have a topic that you went to in those situations? A topic that you pull out of your bag of tricks to make your characters get their butts moving? My current project is a MG fantasy, so I don't think a shower would be quite appropriate for them. Disneyland might be good, but I think I'd like to come up with something completely different.

So I thought I'd ask you all, my wonderful blogging buddies, for brainstorming ideas. Lets figure out some fun ways to force our characters into submission, by manipulation and humiliation. If they aren't going to corporate, lets share some ideas to MAKE them behave.


Oh, and by the way, more than likely, these scenes will not stay in a manuscript. I though it was a great strategy to get past writer's block. Computers are great. You can always delete it later once you've moved on.

The Geniuses of WriteOnCon: Elana Johnson

*deep breath* We have literary rockstars in our midst. 

Hello, Awesome friends! Today, and every Friday for the next month, Operation Awesome brings you…

THE WRITEONCON ORGANIZERS!!! 

First of all, if you missed WriteOnCon, the world’s first and only completely free and completely epic online writers conference, then run—do not walk—over to WriteOnCon’s conference schedule. It’s linky, so you can view anything you missed, totally free. 

And now, I present to you Elana Johnson, the most mysterious* of the WriteOnCon peeps (*this may or may not be true).

of

Katrina: WriteOnCon was seriously epic, historic, unprecedented! As one of its organizers, did you expect WriteOnCon to garner as much industry support as it did? To what do you owe this?

Elana: Totally not. I mean, WE thought it was cool, you know? But that’s not always a guarantee that someone else will.

We owe this to Casey McCormick for having the vision we all lacked.

And of course, to all the industry professionals, from authors to agents to editors, for their time and expertise. No one wants to listen to us, right? Right.

Katrina: What were your thoughts on opening morning when thousands flocked to the site to participate in the first free online writer's conference?

Elana: Well, I knew I wasn’t getting up at 4 AM, so I was hoping someone would. And they did. By the time I dragged myself out of bed at 7:45, 403 had infected the site for about 30 minutes.

The first thing I thought was, “Oh, crap.”

The second? “This is awesome! So many people came, we crashed!”

Third: “OH CRAP!!!”

Then I called LiLa, and they talked me off the ledge, and we rerouted the content to our personal sites.

Katrina: What was the hardest part about WriteOnCon's organization?

Elana: Holy time investment, Batman. That’s all I’m gonna say about that. Okay, one more thing: We’re talking hundreds of hours, people. And that’s time away from the other things in our lives.

Katrina: What was the most important thing you learned this year that will help with future online conferences?

Elana: Um, have a reliable host? Never to use the numbers 403? Get up at 4 AM and then go take a nap later?

But seriously, the most important thing I learned is that the children’s writing community is frawesome.

Katrina: What's next for WriteOnCon? The discussion forums remain active. What role do you see WriteOnCon playing between annual conferences?

Elana: The forums will remain open, and hopefully, active. If I told you what else we were cookin’ up, I’d have to kill you. Just watch the site for deets. *wink*

Katrina: We think it's amazing the work you all did to put on such an amazing conference, and for FREE! Will next year's conference still be free?

Elana: Yes. We got some feedback during our feedback chat about offering merchandise and putting up a donate button, and we’re investigating those options further, but the conference will remain money—and guilt—free. If you can’t donate, no problem. Come anyway!

Katrina: Do you know of any success stories (agents and authors who found each other during the conference)?

Elana: Yes! Becca's story

Katrina: I think I speak for the online writing community when I say THANK YOU! And we want to show our appreciation by spreading the word about WriteOnCon, as well as its organizers. You have a book coming out next Summer. We love shiny new books! Could you tell us a bit about it? 

Elana: Aw, *blush* thanks. Yeah, I do have a book coming out. POSSESSION is about a teenage girl who’s tired of being brainwashed, tired of following all the (lame) rules, tired of belonging to someone else. So she does something about it. Of course, chaos ensues. In the end, she’ll have to decide if what she was tired of all along is really so bad…

Oh, yeah, and there’s boys! Kissing! Danger! Mind control! Leaping off of tall buildings! Evil…wait. No, not gonna spill that.

POSSESSION comes out next summer from Simon & Schuster in both hardcover and e-book formats. 

Katrina: And last of all, what makes a writer Awesome?

Elana: Awesome writers are those who recognize awesome when they see/feel/hear/smell/taste it. And then they do their best to replicate it, whether in their writing or in their attitude or in their lives. 

Other places you'll find Elana: 

Elana's Blog

Elana's Website

Query Tracker blog

League of Extraordinary Writers

What Writers Read

Facebook: http://facebook.com/elanajohnson

Twitter: http://twitter.com/elanaj

She is represented by Michelle Andelman of Regal Literary.

Her popular ebook, From the Query to the Call, is also available for download.


Say hello to Elana in the comments!


Contest Update: The Mystery Agent Pitch Contest winner will be announced Sunday. Don't worry if you didn't post in time, we'll have another contest like this one, and many more chances for you to show off your Awesome!